Kerbals Hiring - feature - V1.0

[monstah]

That's precisely one of my points... Killing Kerbals for economic reasons is very very... very... un-educational. On an otherwise wonderfully educational game. "It's just a game", ok, but these "it's just a game" things, repeated here and there, again and again, slowly and silently crawl into younger minds and stay there and thrive until one day they one of them is a CEO on some company...

But I didn't mean intentionally killing them, I just said that it won't hinder newbies by making new hirings always more expensive.

[Robotengineer]

I don't understand why hiring has been done this way. It would make more sense to have periodic paychecks to Kerbals, and have the paycheck increase as they get more experience.

[FishInferno]

I would like to be able to change a kerbal's salary. If you pay them too little, they quit, and as a kerbal gets higher skill levels, the minimum salary increases

[EtherDragon]

I don't know how much money management of daily expenses, operating costs, pensions, on-boarding costs, and all that we want to add to Kerbal Accountant Simulator.

The focus of the game is launching rockets and completing contracts. Anything not directly supporting that is ultimately confusing fluff.

Is N+1 cost model an oversimplification? Sure, but we're talking about Rocket Science - so it's fine of other aspects are more simple.

Based on the proposed feature, hiring becomes a decision: Do I really need that Nth+1 astronaut, and can I afford the Nth+1 cost premium?

One really good suggestion, though is to have crew become available that already has levels (costs more to hire) and their cost to hire has something to do with their Courage/Stupidity. But let's not make hiring, managing, and paying for crew the focus of the game - that focus should be firmly planted in (slightly simplified) Rocket Science.

Edited April 2, 2015 by EtherDragon

[Wallace]

I think costs should be made to incentivize keeping kerbals alive, so hiring costs for new kerbals should be based on reputation, with them costing more when your reputation is low, so murdering kerbals would damage reputation and put your hiring costs up.

[Master Tao]

This discussion about variations on a planned feature has been moved to Suggestions and Development Discussion.

Carry on.

[Sampa]

Never could figure out why an engineer needs to plant a flag on a distant planet in order to figure out how to use a screwdriver..

Engineering Fail!

[JumpsterG]

How much funds are we talking here? And what kind of curve are we looking at? If it starts really low (as it sounds like it will), I'd expect the first 5-10 kerbals to cost practically nothing, which doesn't change the early game much at all. Only mid and late game will be significantly affected (and with the funds you probably have at that point, will it really?)

If at any point a Kerbal would cost the same as a rocket (10,000-ish?), is that what should be considered prohibitively expensive? If they implement a simple curve like (100, 200, 300, 400, etc.), it would hit 10,000 for the 100th kerbal. A lower increment might create a curve like (100, 150, 200, 250, etc.), which would hit 5,050 for the 100th kerbal. It's very simplistic, but I think this can be tuned to work. It also sounds like a perfect candidate for a difficulty slider.

As far as managing salaries on a time-based system (and anywhere that time warp is concerned), I don't think the core game will benefit from players being required to juggle things if they aren't interested in doing so. Using Kerbal Alarm Clock is awesome, managing monthly expenses could be cool, maintaining life support among multiple crews and missions is neat and challenging, but all of these things are pitfalls for a more casual player: "Oops, I timewarped to finish my Eeloo mission, and now my budget is in the red..." or cause frustration for more knowledgeable players, "There's no WAY I'm doing an Eeloo mission, I'll need to interrupt it like 24 times to do other contracts just to keep my budget from going into the red...".

[Wjolcz]

I like the idea of cost being based on the skill. Maybe we could choose how much we want to spend on a crew member and the more money we add the higher are their skills.

Spending money on training future pilots/engineers/scientists. Makes sense to me.

And I would like it to actually cost A LOT to have a fully trained Kerbal before even their first flight.

EDIT: And I agree with people saying that when crew is on the mission it should get more money. Would be some sort of substitute for life support before we get a proper one.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Veeltch

[Bill Phil]

Kerbal before even it's first flight.

So, kerbals are "its"?

Paying money to have more training makes sense. But it should require upgraded facilities ( the idea being that the equipment to train them isn't there).

[Whirligig Girl]

So, kerbals are "its"?

Paying money to have more training makes sense. But it should require upgraded facilities ( the idea being that the equipment to train them isn't there).

Relevant to that.

On Topic: I don't like the idea of having to pay for your kerbals. I like to think they're volunteers. A toggle in the settings?

[Bill Phil]

The problem with that video, is that it isn't relevant. I was referring to the dehumanizing(dekerbalizing?) factor of calling a Kerbal "it" when Kerbals clearly are more than just objects.

On topic: A toggle would be good, yeah.

[mattinoz]

Have to agree the kerbal hiring formula seems like a poor workaround to building proper time based mechanics.

it is KSP not KSF after all.

That said it might be passable if new hires started higher than zero stars. Say the rounded down average of your current employees. To me the only reason it should get more expensive is you are getting more skill.

[Mr. Scruffy]

To me, the proposed model of increased cost for hiring kerbals, instead of having a periodic payment for them, is just another misguided attempt to avoid a feature that is simply required to make the campaign game work properly: time. It´s like they are trying to build a rocket without decouplers or stack seperators: Yeah, it might work in the end, somehow, but....

I really wish, they´d finally come around to this, before they sink more time and energy into accomodating a model that distorts ´reality´ (to the extent the term may apply here) and immersion so heavily, that it will never yield a proper result, imho.

I wonder if anyone here has ever played a so-called ´grand strategy game´ - games by paradox interactive (Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings...) in particular. You are more or less constantly time-warping in those games - and it´s not a problem in the slightest. We are time-warping right now in KSP, too, all the time. What´s the fraking problem?

It´s like the devs have some sort of phobia versus something that is quite common in (pseudo-) continous simulations. Really, any game, that runs outside turns, uses this, from ´The Sims´ to ´Sim Earth´. You might actually say, that ´time-warp´ is THE enabler of this whole class (above genre, in my taxometry) of games. In other words: The fact that we can warp time is the reason why we can have time as a meaningful resource, without problems. And since it´s a conditio sine qua none in a space-faring real-time game, anyways... i am getting more and more puzzled with the devs decisions concerning this. I think they are making a big mistake, which they should rectify asap.

All these abstractions (and the associated creativity) are unneccessary (and wasted) if they´d just finally decided to do it the proper way. They are causing more problems for themselves then they are solving by refusing to do so.

Just my opinion. No offence meant. Just trying to help. Thx.

[klgraham1013]

snip

Completely agree. So many games have used time-based mechanics to great effect. Many of these also have time warp.

[tater]

I agree with Mr. Scruffy completely. Many things are being kludged to avoid the non-exploit of "warping" that Squad thinks is an exploit for some bizarre reason.

You can start a career, and upgrade/unlock everything, and have manned bases on planets in a few months from Jeb starting out not knowing which end of the rocket it's bad to stand near.

Time---we are talking about CAREER MODE---is unambiguously a good thing for gameplay. Time limits are good, they make something now trivial a challenge (like rescuing a kerbal would be if you needed to do it the same orbit as launch or he'd run out of air). Right now, funds are acquired entirely by 3d party contracts, some of which are seemingly for pure science research (something you'd think your own program might be for). How is grinding through parts testing contracts, or using your orbital lab or satellite to "get science from orbit" via clicking/grinding for funds/science better than having a budget that doses out funds over time?

Easy addition of time to KSP:

Take Explore "contracts." IMO (I've posted this before), most all the science contracts should be renamed "Missions" and they are not 3d party, but internal ideas from Werner, Linus, and other staff at your own KSC. Setting that mission goal (by "taking the contract") would give you the entire funds reward---and possibly some or all of the science reward---as a budget per XX Kerbin days. Say 49-50 days (a minmus month). The installments start at the time of selection, so if you run out of funds, you need to warp ahead XX days (or take grindy contracts which would still be there as they are now). Note that I included science as dosed out that way---spacecraft are designed to do a specific mission (except Orion ), with new technology being invented to do so many times. Science in advance could be a new paradigm for a tech tree that is less linear and allows more player direction---you have a small budget of tech to spend to get a lander, or instruments, etc, before you go.

That's it. The mechanic above instantly makes time matter as all the "big" goals are budgetary items now. Note that the Explore missions can be rewritten to be more complex, with more steps, in addition to adding more such contracts ("Explore Kerbin Orbit" (science from orbit missions) or "Perfect Orbital Maneuvering" (rendezvous, docking, and plane changing missions), etc).

THEN you add labor costs. Having a fixed minmonthly (minmus month time frame I have now named minmonthly just now ) cost per astronaut is fine, just assume that total labor scales to astronauts as a simplification. If so, have some long-term Missions that pay out enough to mostly cover such costs. Say there is a Mission for 'Long Term Orbital Science" the description would say it's about kerbals spending long periods in space. Have milestones like relieving the crew at various intervals (return crew after 1 minmonth, then 3 minmonths, then 1 year, etc.) This would pay out for years, but if you do that one mission you need not worry about payroll, basically, unless you have huge numbers of astronauts.

[JumpsterG]

To me, the proposed model of increased cost for hiring kerbals, instead of having a periodic payment for them, is just another misguided attempt to avoid a feature that is simply required to make the campaign game work properly: time...

[snip for brevity]

On one hand, I'm with you, because I feel that managing finances and multiple projects with respect to time is within the realm of a space program tycoon game, and if you don't want to go bankrupt, of course you wouldn't timewarp blindly.

But here's the thing. Right now, there's two styles of playing:

-Flying one mission at a time

Launch and orbit

timewarp to transfer window

transfer burn

timewarp to destination

do stuff

timewarp to return window

return burn

timewarp to home

Land

... Repeat for next mission

-Flying multiple missions

Launch and orbit Flight 1

Timewarp to Flight 1's transfer window

Transfer burn for Flight 1

Launch and orbit Flight 2

Timewarp to Flight 2's transfer window

Transfer burn for Flight 2

Timewarp to Flight 2's destination

Do stuff with Flight 2

Timewarp to Flight 1's destination

Do stuff with Flight 1

Timewarp to Flight 2's return window

Return burn for Flight 2

Timewarp to Flight 2 return

Land Flight 2

Launch and orbit Flight 3

... Continue launching new flights and managing existing ones

Both styles are valid and work with the proposed system. Using a time-based mechanic, like monthly salaries, the first style becomes problematic for anything interplanetary (especially if we're going by Kerbin months and not Earth months):

According to http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/, a simple Duna trip will take 66 Earth days (233 Kerbin days) just to arrive at the planet. That's about 2 (or 7) Kerbal pay periods if you're paying out salaries monthly.

So, the player trying to do 1 mission at a time is going to bankrupt himself on salaries since he isn't accomplishing contracts during the time he is following a mission. Sure, if the salaries were made insignificant enough, then it could work, but then what's the point of having salaries?

Furthermore, the player who is managing multiple missions will certainly not bankrupt themself, but how many short, Kerbin-system contracts will a player want to do while waiting for their Eeloo ship to finish transferring? As a reminder, Eeloo is about 1 year 106 days transit (Kerbal time: 4 years 184 days), so we're talking 15 months (57 Kerbin months) of contracts. Even if one mission a month was enough to cover the costs, that's 15 separate missions before you could finish the one you're waiting on. Again, if salaries were small enough not to matter, you could skip some or all of these missions, but what's the point of the salaries then?

On the point of salaries: A salary mechanic means that having more kerbals costs more funds, and that's all it should entail. Managing monthly budgets (and interrupting my missions to have me grind other missions) is a layer of complexity beyond that simple concept. Feel free to disagree with my opinion here. I've enjoyed mechanics like the Snacks! mod where I DO have to halt missions in progress to go maintain something else, so I know it isn't all bad. I just fear it being the ONLY way to play in a game that encourages players to do things their own way.

Summary: I feel this is the reason the developers are steering away from time-based mechanics. It isn't the fact that we can just warp through things but rather that players would be forced to divide their attention (some of which may enjoy it, some of which may not). With the simpler system, players who want to manage more than one thing can do so, but with built-in time-mechanics, players would have no choice but to multitask (or eat severe costs by timewarping too much).

[tater]

Summary: I feel this is the reason the developers are steering away from time-based mechanics. It isn't the fact that we can just warp through things but rather that players would be forced to divide their attention (some of which may enjoy it, some of which may not). With the simpler system, players who want to manage more than one thing can do so, but with built-in time-mechanics, players would have no choice but to multitask (or eat severe costs by timewarping too much).

Read my suggestion above. There is no need to divide attention when a chunk of the "contracts" are replaced with "Missions" that pay out minmonthly (50 Kerbin days). If you have 40 flights in progress, you are dividing attention anyway, and if you launch to Jool, and warp, as "management" you need to make sure you have some time-based cash flow. Note that anyone playing 1 mission at a time has no need for a huge astronaut payroll, anyway, that is only necessitated by many flights in progress.

[JumpsterG]

Time---we are talking about CAREER MODE---is unambiguously a good thing for gameplay. Time limits are good, they make something now trivial a challenge (like rescuing a kerbal would be if you needed to do it the same orbit as launch or he'd run out of air).

...

Easy addition of time to KSP:

Take Explore "contracts." IMO (I've posted this before), most all the science contracts should be renamed "Missions" and they are not 3d party, but internal ideas from Werner, Linus, and other staff at your own KSC. Setting that mission goal (by "taking the contract") would give you the entire funds reward---and possibly some or all of the science reward---as a budget per XX Kerbin days. Say 49-50 days (a minmus month). The installments start at the time of selection, so if you run out of funds, you need to warp ahead XX days (or take grindy contracts which would still be there as they are now). Note that I included science as dosed out that way---spacecraft are designed to do a specific mission (except Orion ), with new technology being invented to do so many times. Science in advance could be a new paradigm for a tech tree that is less linear and allows more player direction---you have a small budget of tech to spend to get a lander, or instruments, etc, before you go.

...

Time limits can induce challenge and provide an offset to the "timewarp for maximum funds/science" problem, but we're still talking about solar system scales here. If there's a time limit for rescuing a kerbal from Kerbin orbit, how do you set it to be fair? If he's in an easy orbit (0 degree equatorial) it easily can be done in less than an hour if you know how or many orbits if you're still learning to rendezvous; If he's in a weird orbit (high inclination, high eccentricity, high Ap), you'd have to give a wide enough margin of time for a regular player to figure out the more complex rendezvous. If the game places the kerbal outside the Kerbin system, you're not picking him up within a day, and he could be anywhere in position around the sun, so you'd have to give a wide margin to include waiting on a transfer window, transfer time, and time for rendezvous maneuvers. This leads directly to problems with other interplanetary contracts... How do you set a fair time limit for getting to Duna? Too high and it's not a challenge for anyone; too low and newer players could fail a contract even if they succeeded in getting to their destination and returning if they took too long. If you also have a mechanic of generating funds/science over time, then there's the min-maxy situation of a player trying to timewarp just enough to get as much funds/science as possible but not too far as to miss a deadline, which doesn't sound like a fun minigame at all (playing stopwatch with the time/funds indicators). I'm not saying time limits couldn't be done well, but it's my opinion that it's very difficult to tune these limits to a satisfactory levels (especially if you're trying to please everyone).

If I had to implement a system of monthly expenses, I would go your route by offsetting monthly expenses with some form of monthly income. In such a way, players could build infrastructure to make their space agency self-sufficient, and thus would not have to worry about hemorrhaging funds while timewarping during missions. Preventing players from having infinite funds through timewarping becomes a problem if you aren't using some kind of constraint, though (see time limits above), so I'm still not 100% on board with this implementation, but I could see it working if a clever workaround could be made.

All of this adds complexity and some degree of grinding to the game, so keep that in mind. I feel the devs have tried to design the game to reward the player's exploits without forcing them to do things in a specific way or with heavy requirements.

As an aside, I'm enjoying considering the consequences of various implementations. There's many ways the game could be done that would all be valid but require different paradigms.

- - - Updated - - -

Read my suggestion above. There is no need to divide attention when a chunk of the "contracts" are replaced with "Missions" that pay out minmonthly (50 Kerbin days). If you have 40 flights in progress, you are dividing attention anyway, and if you launch to Jool, and warp, as "management" you need to make sure you have some time-based cash flow. Note that anyone playing 1 mission at a time has no need for a huge astronaut payroll, anyway, that is only necessitated by many flights in progress.

True, there's a style of play that never needs to hire any kerbals whatsoever. In this case, the problem of salaries doesn't even come up, really. Though 1 mission at a time doesn't mean a player doesn't maintain a space station or set up planetary bases populated with Kerbals. Just that they will timewarp whatever craft they are focused on until the whole mission that craft is on is finished. There's also some leeway in that a player that typically plays 1 mission at a time may sometimes not do that and instead do multi-mission things, like constructing multi-vessel ships in orbit, or having an armada meet up at another planet. the point is that they focus on a project rather than their space agency as a whole, and they may very well not want to be distracted from their current project because funds drain at a constant rate.

On the other hand, I do agree that offsetting monthly costs with some form of monthly income could be made to work. See my last post above for some of that. But there are consequences: If income > expenses then timewarping provides infinite funds (making funds irrelevant). To fix this, some form of time limiting mechanic is needed, so that timewarping too much causes the player some kind of setback they'd want to avoid. In my post above, I laid out a bit how time limits are tricky to set in the first place, but they can be made to work. My biggest fear for time limits is that they force players to pay attention to them instead of the mission they want to focus on.

Basically, there's a cascade of new layers of complexity once you allow one time-based mechanic into the design. It can be made to work, but ultimately it adds more things a player needs to keep track of. There are definitely players who like this level of complexity, but to enforce it on all players may be too much.

[Joonatan1998]

The severity of time based elements could depend on difficulty settings, from "feel free to wait 100 years for a perfect transfer window" to "You only have 10 missions at the same time = Game Over"

[tater]

Currently time is mostly meaningless in KSP. It is something to be warped through en route to a distant world, or to a transfer window, nothing more.

I've read (second hand) that Squad doesn't like the idea of science over time because people could exploit it by warping years into the future. This is a non-argument, frankly. Anyone willing to do this in career could also just give themselves science at the start of career or play sandbox. Players "exploiting" in a game where they have 100% control of everything anyway is not a thing to be concerned about.

If I use "Mission" instead of "Contract" I mean the "Explore" missions, only expanded a great deal, possibly including some/many of the current "contracts" that are asking the player to do science. Missions are YOUR PROGRAM setting possible goals. Your science guys spitball ideas, and they are presented as "Missions" to accept or pass on by you (the management). I assume some major changes in the contracts in general to fit the new mechanic, whatever it is.

I'm going to try and stick with GAMEPLAY as the goal here. Suffice it to say that time mattering is clearly more realistic than time not being a thing. Realism arguments simply don't matter for stock in this case, let's stick to gameplay. Anything that seems too hard? Have a difficulty setting, problem solved.

How to add time with minimal changes. I will add pros and cons (gameplay!) below each (I'm sure I missed something, add more!):

Assume that the stated "warp to waypoint" feature for 1.0 could have a button at KSC that warps to the next calendar Minmonth (every 50 days is one Minmonth (Minmus month)) for the ideas below.

1. Life support. This creates a time-limit for all missions based upon craft design.

Pros:

Creates challenges for designs---and makes later game harder, which is the opposite of current KSP.

Makes for interesting rescues when something goes wrong (some of my most fun missions have been this).

Creates meaningful in-game time by virtue of resupply, etc, for some facilities.

Cons:

Almost none, it's a difficulty setting with no LS, LS has some minor effect (rep hit, lazy kerbals, etc), and death). Don't like it, turn it off.

OK, ONE con… you need to schedule resupplies, then do them. Can get grindy with many facilities and no automation.

2. Time-based science. Having certain experiments generate science over time (orbiters, for example). This can be via contract science/time, or actual experiments. It can be SLOW, BTW, like 1 science point every Minmonth, every 6 minmonths, whatever this can be adjusted).

Pros:

New mechanic offers new Mission profiles. Orbiters "mapping" to gain science over time, for example."

Missions could possibly pay science over time as a science budget (before mission completion). You can use the "prepaid" science points to buy parts for a specific Mission (as NASA developed the LEM for the Moon mission).

Reduces grinding exploits that are already in the game that do the same thing, but with endless clicking (science from orbit, etc).

Cons:

None. Seen as possible to exploit by warping, but this is a non-issue since it is only an issue because in current KSP time is meaningless.

3. Time-based funds acquisition. Having some contracts (Missions) generate funds over time, exclusively. Ie: "Explore the Mun" pays out 7,000 funds per minmonth until the total reward (budget) is paid. The amount is scaled to how long the devs think that should take in "kerbin time." Note that there are MANY more missions added that do this, small minmonthly budgets.

Pros:

Creates a sense of budget, and literally creates time as a meaningful aspect of the game as all non-commercial Missions will have minmonthly budgets. Blow up a rocket that used all your funds? Warp to next minmonth, and try again (1 new button at KSC).

Allows for a small, constant fund stream for new players so that a single failure cannot instantly end your program (without this KSP is most difficult for NEW players, and only gets easier).

Reduces grinding for funds via repetitive contracts.

Kerbal hiring costs go HERE. Small cost for each astronaut over time. Orange suits are free (folded into whatever the fixed costs are).

Cons:

Seen as a possible exploit, but only because time means nothing. Once time means something, not a problem.

4. Time-based expenses. Having some costs occur over time.

Pros:

Solution to 2 and 3 (above) being seen as exploits. Expenses over time makes warping to max science points or funds not possible, or not as rewarding.

Some currently expensive things could be paid for over time (facility upgrades, for example), reducing grinding to get X million funds.

Cons:

You could possibly go bankrupt (is that a con, or just a meaningful end-game?) by doing nothing, and spending to do so.

Number 4 is basically the solution to the notion of "exploits." Commercial contracts would mostly pay on completion, and internal contracts (Missions) would ALL pay by the minmonth. Note that the Missions have expiration times, so when you hit the end of the mission, the stream of funds stops.

Rescue missions would have meaningful time limits. Accept NOW, or lose them, and they expire based upon the situation. Lone kerbal in space? Whatever the EVA LS time should be. Longer rescues would have the kerbal in a pod, and would have LS to last whatever stock LS would add (Roverdude's new LS mod uses 15 days, Snacks! defaults to ~100 days, the more realistic mods (IFLS/TAC) are more like Roverdude's new one). Kerbal in pod with whatever that pod contains. Have the star-rating of those missions reflect this. Lone kerbal rescues might be 3 star, pod rescues are easier as they have longer timeframes.

Note that this creates meaningful time completely within the context of KSP as it already is as incentive/disincentive, with no new mechanics required for the game at all (though a "warp to XX days ahead" feature would be a nice addition).

Edited April 3, 2015 by tater
clarification.

[pincushionman]

I'm a player who ordinarily despises Sim-X type games, and even I think that time-based constraints (build /development time, overhead costs) are an essential part of what the game intends to be. After all, it's Kerbal Space Program. Career should be a challenge.

[JadedStoner]

I've read through this thread and I think there is a point missing here. The proposed hiring system would be great... for SCIENCE mode! There is no incentive to return Kerbals, it's all about exploring. So it should cost you more to send that 100th guy out on some mission.

As for CAREER mode, the OP is absolutely right. Salaries, hazard pay and all that good stuff. When probes go on long distance transfers, major operations are limited to very few personnel and are "awoken" for major trajectory changes, so there could be a very small operations budget to account for it. Maintaining a space station could provide long term funds and rep. To do it right would take serious work from the Devs and I would respect any amount of time they needed to create a truly robust economic system.

Just my two cents.

JS

[Mr. Scruffy]

Edited April 3, 2015 by Mr. Scruffy

[klgraham1013]

XCom is a great example, as is Civilization 5. The "one more turn" addiction of those games is only present because of time-based mechanics.